Emeli Sande talks ahead of Birmingham gig

Emeli Sande spend the early part of her career writing hits for other performers. After teaming up with producer/writer Shahid Khan, aka Naughty Boy, she worked on tracks for Alesha Dixon, Chipmunk, Professor Green, Devlin, Preeya Kalidas, Cheryl Cole, and Tinie Tempah.

“I was doing a show in London for 1Xtra and I met this guy called Naughty Boy. We got in the studio and we clicked work wise. We just started writing, not necessarily for me, we just thought ‘let’s write a pop tune’ and experiment. And we wrote the Chipmunk track and I thought nothing of it. Naughty Boy sent it off to Chipmunk who really liked it and wrote his stuff around it.”

Sande, however, hankered to be centre stage, rather than in the wings. And her big break came in 2011 when she released her debut single, Heaven. Soon, she was at the top of the charts as Read All About It gave her her first number one hit and she won a BRIT Award for British Breakthrough Act before being flown out to the USA to perform at the White House for President Obama.

Emeli, who plays the O2 Academy in Birmingham on Sunday, had great expectations to live up to when she released her second album last year. And while Long Live The Angels couldn’t quite match up to her seven-times debut, Our Version of Events, it reached number two on the chart and earned a gold disc.

“We’ve been doing a lot of album promotion, radio and TV, packed a lot in. So it’s been a bit busy, but all quite fun. Hopefully it was worth it.”

But while Emeli has enjoyed remarkable success in her professional life, it’s taken a toll on her personal life. Her 10 year-relationship with Adam Gouraguine, the marine biologist she started dating at 17 and married in 2012, floundered and ended in divorce after a year.

That break-down was the catalyst for Long Life The Angels, which Emeli wrote to process the turmoil.

“I knew I had put so much on pause. Travelling around you do that. You put your personal life on hold, so I knew I had to take time off to know myself and what I wanted to do. Towards the end of last year I felt ready to get out there and show the music.

“I didn’t feel pressure from the outside. When I write I take myself away and surround myself with friends and musicians, people I love, so any pressure comes from me, nitpicking and making it right. I wanted to make something that was worth four years out and reflected what those years of growth were for me. I wanted to tell a story of survival, that was very honest about the lows and the highs. I wanted to say you can get through it and find self-love, which I found towards the end, that’s the message.”

Emeli’s new record tracks her journey through trauma to solitude, from optimism to celebration.

“I feel like the last four years changed me. I’m much more realistic in my view of the world and my place in it. I have grown up a lot. Before I shied away from being independent and having responsibilities and being a grown up. As long as you do your job writing songs, everything is done for you, which is amazing, but I needed to learn grown up skills and develop knowledge and independence, self-awareness and identity. Now I’m more confident in what I want to say. It’s a cliché, but it’s about understanding yourself and your identity. Over this time I stepped into womanhood and adulthood and understood the reality of life. I went on a crash course of life. It was a coming of age.”

Emeli has finally come to terms with the whirlwind nature of her success. Though she had hoped her solo work would be successful, even she was taken aback.

“Before my first album came out, I wrote with Alicia Keys. She kind of became a big sister. She’d be like, ‘You have to schedule personal time’. Because I wasn’t that busy, I was like, Well, you’re Alicia Keys — but that probably doesn’t apply to me. Now looking back, I’m like, Okay, that’s why she said it. Even if it feels weird scheduling it in, you have to make sure you do nothing. It’s so important that your family and the people you love have your attention, and you’re still involved in real life.

“When a label gets involved, and they want to push your music even to a bigger audience, you have to start keeping up with this pace. I think that unless you’re feeling very healthy — mind, body, and soul — you can’t get on that racetrack. You have to be so strong, and your personal life has to just be on the back burner. And for me, that was the part I didn’t really like.

“There’s nothing I regret. [But] I did start to feel very tired. I didn’t have time to get better as an artist — and you have to live, to have something to write about. [I was] 22, 23 when it all started, and those are such crucial years to get to know yourself, especially going from a girl to a woman.

“I look up to Nina Simone, Janis Joplin, and Joni Mitchell, and the depth of their lyrics, you can tell they’d really been in love and they’d really experienced things. I wanted to do more than [make] something that was selling, I really wanted to make art. I wanted to get very deep. You know, I’d left medical school to do this. I’ve given up a career that would’ve been really special to me to do this, so I’ve got to do it properly.”

Emeli Sande plays the O2 Birmingham on Sunday. Tickets from www.ticketmaster.co.uk